96 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 77 
the outside of the structure. Were they covered with earth or thatch? 
The village visited by Say in 1819 was composed of earth-covered 
lodges, clearly described, but. the drawing made by one of Father 
de Smet’s associates (it is marked Geo. Lehman, del.) represents 
the large circular houses with overhanging roofs, more closely re- 
sembling thatch than the usual covering of earth and sod. This 
drawing, which was reproduced in the work cited, is here shown in — 
plate 30, a. The structures standing in the village visited by Father 
de Smet may have resembled the bark-covered house illustrated in 
plate 31. This most interesting photograph was probably made 
about 40 years ago, and at once suggests the frame, covered with 
bark, and ready for the final covering of earth; in other words, an 
unfinished earth lodge. However, it was probably a complete and 
finished structure. 
Regarding the large village visited by De Smet as mentioned above, 
one historian of the tribe has written: “An important village, and the 
largest of the tribe at that time, was that of old Kah-he-gah-wa-ti- 
an-gah, known as Fool Chief, which from about 1830 to 1846 was 
located on the north side of the Kansas river, just north of the present 
Union Pacific station of Menoken . . . Until recent years the lodge- 
circle marks were visible and its exact location easy to be found.” 
(Morehouse, (1), p. 348.) 
A year passed between the visit of Father de Smet to the Kansa 
towns and the arrival of Fremont in the same locality, but it had 
been a period of trouble for the tribe and they had suffered greatly. 
On June 18, 1842, Fremont wrote in his journal: “ We left our camp 
seven, journeying along the foot of the hills which border the Kansas 
valley ... I rode off some miles to the left, attracted by the ap- 
pearance of a cluster of huts near the mouth of the Vermillion. It 
was a large but deserted Kansas village, scattered in an open wood, 
along the margin of the stream, chosen with the customary Indian 
fondness for beauty of scenery. The Pawnees had attacked it in the 
early spring. Some of the houses were burnt, and others blackened 
with smoke, and weeds were already getting possession of the clea 
places.” (Fremont, (1), pp. 12-13.) 
It is quite probable that during their journeys away from the per- 
manent villages the Kansa, like other tribes of the Missouri Valley, 
made use of skin tipis as being easily transported from one place to 
another. It would also appear that in later years the earth and bark 
covered lodge ceased to be used, and that skin tipis were constructed 
to the exclusion of other forms of dwellings. A missionary who re- 
sided at the Kansa agency from 1865 to 1868 wrote: “The tribe at 
that time was divided into three bands, or villages, as they were gen- 
erally called. Ish-tal-a-sa’s village occupied the northern part of 
